From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V9 #53 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Sender: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "precious-things-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. precious-things-digest Wednesday, April 28 2004 Volume 09 : Number 053 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Mayor of SS review [e m ] Marianne--the film [Richard Handal ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 21:29:26 -0700 (PDT) From: e m Subject: Mayor of SS review a very indirect tori reference. i just spotted another review of Mayor of the Sunset Strip from roger ebert. he gave it 3 stars though, so i guess its a good thing...just too bad tori's not really in the movie. http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-mayor23f.html - -ellen ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 06:36:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Richard Handal Subject: Marianne--the film Hi, All: This is a bit tangential, but I found it worth briefly noting here. A student at the University of Virginia made a film entitled Marianne which was accepted this spring into the greater D.C. area's Rosebud Film Festival. Other than the song being its inspiration there's no material connection between the plot of the film and the music of Tori Amos, but I think by itself that makes for a strong relationship. The making of this film reminds me that unknown to them, one person *can* make a difference in the lives of many others, even after they haven't been walking the earth for a while. Last fall when Rom Alejandro was looking for an idea for a student film, a good friend of his had recently felt the loss of a friend by her own hand. Various friends of the girl had responded differently to her death, and Rom's friend told him that he had gained comfort from listening to Tori's song Marianne. In this Rom found the seed of an idea for his film. Most of this story is in an article published in early March in UVA's student-run newspaper: http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=19123&pid=1128 The festival awards were presented over the weekend and Marianne didn't win one. (The judges seemed to be partial to films which were more technically experimental.) Nonetheless, having seen Marianne I can report that I found it to be moving and provocative. There is no dialog and two of the three songs which served as its score are by Sigur Ros, so their lyrics aren't in English. The acting was nothing special, but it seemed to me to be quite respectable, and the film's images were allowed to speak for themselves. In 1927, on the threshold of the era of synchronized sound in feature films, when studio mogul Harry Warner posed his famous question "Who wants to hear actors talk?" he must have had me in mind, because I find the possibility of deep, direct communication of emotion to be greater when there's little opportunity for words to get in the way. Maybe that's one reason I was so moved by the film the first time I watched it. Rom is already two films beyond Marianne and one is a comedy, so he's moving on with his filmmaking. Being 13 1/2 minutes long (in addition to issues of format, etc.) I don't see there being much of a market for the film, but once again Maryanne has managed somehow to insinuate her healing energy into the consciousness of someone who never knew her when she was alive and it was transformed into something beautiful. I always find it to be remarkable when that occurs. Be seeing you, Richard Handal, H.G. When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them. --Chinese Proverb ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V9 #53 ************************************